ICSOB PhD Retreat 2024 Preface
                         Rodrigo Santos1, and Dron Khanna2
                                1   Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Department of Applied Informatics, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
                                2   Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Faculty of Engineering, Bolzano, Italy
                                               1

                         The International Conference on Software Business (ICSOB) is focused on software-intensive
                         businesses from the Software Engineering and Information Systems perspectives. In 2024, ICSOB
                         promoted the 3rd PhD Retreat as a one-day event in Winkel van Sinkel, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
                         Eight PhD students from Brazil, Finland, Germany, and The Netherlands submitted their projects
                         which were evaluated by three program committee members. These submissions were accepted
                         for discussion and publication as early and mid-stage projects covering large language models,
                         artificial intelligence, public procurement, digital sovereignty, blockchain, low-code, research
                         software, transparency, software ecosystems, developer experience, security, and repository
                         mining. The PhD students presented their projects in two sessions in the morning after the event
                         opening by the program committee chairs and got feedback from four experienced mentors
                         (Helena Olsson, Jan Bosch, Jesper Andersson, and Joey van Angeren). In the afternoon, students
                         were arranged into two groups to participate in a mentorship session with these experts on
                         research methods and implications. Finally, a motivational talk was given by Helena Olsson on
                         “Software, data, AI and then…!? Software business in an era of digital transformation”. We thank
                         to the PhD students and their advisors for their paper submissions, the program committee
                         members for their valuable reviews, the mentors for their priceless discussions, the keynote for
                         the inspiring talk, and the ICSOB 2024 organizing committee (Slinger Jansen and his team) who
                         assist us in the preparation of the PhD Retreat over the year.

                         PhD Retreat Chairs

                         Rodrigo Santos, Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), Brazil
                         Dron Khanna, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

                         Program Committee

                         Edona Elshan, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
                         Eduardo Guerra, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
                         Fabian Fagerholm, Aalto University, Finland
                         Helena Olsson, University of Malmö, Sweden
                         Henry Edison, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
                         Jesper Andersson, Linnaeus University, Sweden
                         Joey van Angeren, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
                         Jorge Melegati, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
                         José Maria David, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil
                         Mohamad Kassab, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
                         Noel Carroll, University of Galway, Ireland
                         Rafael Capilla, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
                         Simone Vasconcelos, IF Fluminense, Brazil
                         Xiaofeng Wang, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy




                                rps@uniriotec.br (R. Santos); Dron.Khanna@unibz.it (D. Khanna)
                                 0000-0003-4749-2551 (R. Santos); 0000-0003-4760-5560 (D. Khanna)




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Workshop      ISSN 1613-0073
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